PC Gamer looks at the battle for the definition of a roguelike in the roguelike community.

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"We had a perfectly fine term for this genre for a couple decades and there is a certain loss of identity when a mainstream majority starts using that term to mean something rather different and we can no longer use it to have the same meaning it once had, at least not without considering the audience," says Ge. "That's part of what got us here in the first place, that there is no one clear definition of what a roguelike is, so it's naturally evolving over time based on its use by different parties, and the speed of that evolution has accelerated considerably in the last five years!"

That point is echoed by Darren Grey, another moderator of the r/roguelike subreddit who also hosts the Roguelike Radio podcast. He made a point that forced me to consider how the emerging mainstream interpretation of the genre might be more incongruous with the original text than us normies fully understand. Grey was first drawn to roguelikes because he never had any interest in twitchy, input-heavy games. Not now, and not when he first started gaming. "I'm a conservative in terms of games I like. I have close to zero interest in anything that requires reflexes," he says. "Such games just don't do it for me, except maybe in social settings." With that in mind, consider how someone like Grey would receive Enter The Gungeon—a bullet hell gauntlet that asks for precise dodges, marksmanship, and cover negotiation—when it gets christened as a roguelike. If Grey considers that to be heresy, I'm not going to be the person who tells him he's wrong.

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The original ROGUE is now available on Steam at a 15% discount.

In the early 1980s, a computer game emerged that changed the world of fantasy gaming forever. Randomly generated rooms meant that each journey into the infamous Dungeons of Doom was unique. The potent combination of random generation with perma-death proved to be intoxicating, and the game was so influential it spawned an entire genre: "Rogue-likes".

Now you too can experience the thrill of dungeon crawling for the fabled Amulet of Yendor in the original ASCII adventure.

• Battle dozens of unique and powerful enemies.
• Gather armor, weapons, food and other items to help you on your quest.
• Scour rooms for secret hidden doors and traps.
• Discover strange magical spells and potions, which have different wonderous effects every time you play the game.
• Survive through 26 randomly generated levels, each more tricky and dangerous than the last, to find the Amulet, then escape... if you can!

How long has it been?

How many lifetimes have passed since I began my sojourn through this maze of underground passageways, of damp, dimly lit chambers? How long have I been alone, the only human among a menacing crew of hideous subterranean beasts, stumbling over forlorn reminders that others have passed this way before me... never to return!

Long before I forgot the warmth of the noonday sun or the refreshing coolness of the evening breeze, I forgot my name. Call me what you will. I am the Rogue.

For Rogue aficionados, you may wish to know that this particular version is Epyx Rogue v1.49 for the IBM PC.